Brain Cancer Yogi Informs a Teacher’s Practice

Not everyone can benefit from the same yoga practice. A young student may arrive in class with tight hamstrings but an older student may bring a much more complicated medical history to the mat. When a practice is adjusted to the students— especially a student suffering with Cancer, the benefits can be endless. When my mother was first diagnosed with Cancer I did not practice yoga. Had I known what I know now I could have helped her after surgery as she struggle with even the simplest tasks. My teachings and her benefits came later along with my lessons learned as an instructor.More than ten years ago my mother found out she had an acoustic neuroma tumor wrapped around her left inner ear. One of those cancers that develops on its own accord, acoustic neuroma, has an almost lyrical name. It perhaps conjures up images of constellations, or a musical style. Yet it is a disease, a tumor that develops over the course of years inside the brain. Acoustic neuromas (also called vestibular schwannomas) are generally self-contained tumors that develop around the structure of the inner ear. Benign and slow growing, the cancer causes symptoms that vary depending on size but generally involve a loss of hearing and balance and a ringing in the ears (tinnitus). Larger tumors can interfere with facial control, and can grow large enough to press on the brainstem, a life-threatening condition. Even after successful removal of the tumor, survivors experience a range of symptoms including loss of balance, headaches and dizziness, accompanied by mild to severe tinnitus. Surgery successfully removed my mothers tumor, but as with almost all surgeries involving the brain, side-effects lingered. She experienced loss of balance, often debilitating; significant tinnitus; total loss of hearing on the left side; sensitivity to pressure changes, either natural, such as weather fronts, or resulting from movement or lying down.

Indeed, this sense of helplessness is a pervasive cultural condition. Where the yogi has learned to explore and develop conscious control of the body, Westerners often view the body as a passive vehicle, ignored and commonly mistreated. This imbalance of physical and psychological energy leads to dis-ease, bringing us to experience the rapid-fire, industrialized assembly line care common in Western medicine. It is a system that views significant side effects as inevitable. For years, my mother wandered from physical therapist to neurologist to motor specialist, each specialist prescribing a different series of medications, exercises and advice. Each new encounter with the healthcare system failed to bring her relief. She spent a lot of time in bed, escaping her condition through sleep.

In May, I returned from the Jivamukti teacher training program in New York. My mother listened as I extolled the virtues of the training and told her how yoga brings a steadiness of mind and how it freed me from chronic lower back pain. She turned to me and said, “Well, can it help me?” Understand, my mother had been ignoring my good advice for years: “Stop smoking.” “Consider not drinking six cans of Pepsi a day.” “Get a bit more exercise and you’ll feel better.” Still, my mother calls my diet “veeger”, a line from the first Star Trek movie, instead of vegan. So, as she asked with all seriousness about the benefits of yoga, I was both stunned and thrilled.

Our first yoga session was an experience in experimentation. While tadasana may be the beginning of most yoga classes, standing upright is quite a challenge for someone with compromised balance. Backbending asanas, balancing asanas, arm balances—all were too advanced for my mother’s condition. A simple forward fold such as uttanasa was out of the question. The pose put too much pressure on the delicate tissues of the brain, causing vertigo and nausea. Engaged in constant dialogue, our first and subsequent sessions moved through gentle seated postures: twists, hip openers, shoulder stretches. My mother steadied her breathing, maintained presence of mind and developed the most important posture of all: empowerment. For perhaps the first time, my mother had the ability to directly influence the care she received. As she described how the asana made her feel, we adjusted accordingly. Her body became something to explore and understand rather than something to avoid.

I continue to work with my mother, and our yoga sessions involve many non-traditional asanas. We are currently working on “walkasana,” where my mother focuses her attention on parts of her foot as she walks. For five steps, she concentrates on the left toe, then five steps on the right. We explore such modifications as “gardening asana,” “cough asana,” “dog-grooming asana.” Each week she will bring a new question for us to figure out together, and the challenge of incorporating aspects of more difficult asanas into simple movements has deepened my own practice considerably. How to invoke the power of virabhadrasana I while seated? The surrender of child’s pose without moving? As a teacher, the energetics of the asanas begins to unfold for me as I watch my mother invoke these experiences through dharana, or mental focus.

As she progresses, each aspect of her life unfolds for her as something new, something to approach with a sense of attention and awareness. That, above all, is the mark of a yogi.

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